LOL COXHILL

DIGSWELL DUETS

EMANEM 4052

1 - FIRST ENCOUNTER PART ONE - 5:44
2 - FIRST ENCOUNTER PART TWO - 8:45
3 - FIRST ENCOUNTER PART THREE - 2:15
4 - SIDE ONE PART ONE - 14:57
5 - SIDE ONE PART TWO - 4:11
6 - ADDITIONAL ENDING - 3:15

7 - SIDE TWO PART FOUR - 1:10
8 - SIDE TWO PART TWO - 5:22
9 - VERY SHORT PIANO SOLO - 0:09
10 - SIDE TWO PART FIVE - 1:45
11 - EMBRACEABLE WHO? - 2:58
12 - EMBRACEABLE YOU - 5:51
13 - SIDE TWO PART THREE - 3:41
14 - MORE SUBSTANTIAL PIANO SOLO - 2:46
15 - SIDE TWO PART ONE - 7:41
16 - I CAN'T GET STARTED - 2:12

Excerpts from sleeve notes:

The Digswell House concert by Lol Coxhill and Simon Emmerson is one of the
earliest examples of a saxophonist being processed by electronics controlled by
another musician - something that is quite common today. The Oxford concert with
Veryan Weston represents one of the earliest recordings by this duo which still
performs today - a brief recording made the previous year was issued on Ogun.

Both duet recordings are significant as well as excellent, and worthy of reissuing
even though the source material is imperfect. Fortunately, it was possible to work
from tapes which yielded a considerable amount of extra material. The Digswell
tape consisted of six extracts from the concert, only two of which were included
on the original LP, so there is now twice as much music available as before.

The Oxford tapes were more problematical. To start with, the original recording
was made on inferior equipment, resulting in a sound that is lacking but listenable.
The original LP side appears to have been made up from five excerpts, some of which
lead directly into sections of music that were not issued at the time. It was
therefore decided to keep the sequences that apparently happened, rather than
recreate the LP side. The five sections of the LP side have been made into separate
tracks, so that it is possible to programme them back into the LP side if so
desired. It is not possible to ascertain the order of performance after all these
years, but the order on this CD is probably closer to reality than the LP was.

MARTIN DAVIDSON (2001)

Excerpts from reviews:

"You'll have to forgive me here if I toot Lol Coxhill's horn, because
he certainly toots it just fine on his own. Saxophonist Coxhill is an extremely
versatile player who has played in settings ranging from punk rock to abstract
free improvisation. His sense of melody and time are particularly distinctive,
drawing more heavily from the jazz tradition than many of his fellow British
free improvisers. This recording marks an unusual pairing of duet partners: Simon
Emmerson, an electronic artist whose palette largely consists of Coxhill's playing
thrown back at him in real-time; and Veryan Weston, a light-fingered pianist whose
attention to melody and pulse closely reflect Coxhill's own.

Let's get the ugly details taken care of up front: these are live analogue
recordings from 1978, and the sound quality lags far behind what you'd find in
today's recording studio. Enough on that subject; the shortcomings are definitely
audible but do not substantially interfere with the music. The first six duets
consist of Coxhill's conversations with himself through the medium of Simon Emmerson.
Coxhill works patiently here, pursuing held tones and well-articulated intervals,
which provide his partner fuel for the fire. The rich reverb drenching the whole
interaction competes with delay for the listener's attention, but the most exciting
moments are when Emmerson distorts the saxophonist's tone into sharp metallic
shards or multichromatic hunks of sound. You can hear Coxhill striding forward
on the left channel, while Emmerson gradually builds up tension on the right and
eventually chases him around the field. It's early stuff, so we're talking basic
tools here... none of the computerised gadgetry that dominates interactive
improvisation today. But it's done in real time, and the spirit of improvisation
pervades both artists' work.

The second half of the disc consists of mostly short pieces featuring Coxhill
and pianist Veryan Weston. The call-and-response motif pops its head up here and
there, as the two players feel each other out in the moment in order to determine
where they're headed. For the most part, they pursue sparse, melodic improvisation.
The melody may fragment or implode, but most of the time one or the other of these
two players is holding up a flag in the wind. (For overpowering evidence of the
latter, check out their version of Embraceable You, which concludes with
a clever and very jazzy jam.) Coxhill mostly sticks to clean tones, though
he demonstrates a mastery of swooshing legato runs that blur the distinctions
between their endpoints. (And he's not at all opposed to sighing, whistling, or
crying in the night.) Weston is a fantastic foil, because he understands the
importance of space. While he's not averse to simple lines, he often works in
clusters of clusters: simple repeated or modulated pinches of the keys. At times
he borrows from atonality, but when you listen closely you can usually find that
local tonal centers agree heartily with the saxophonist. And Weston's pulse has
an undeniable logic, though it might not hit the ground every two beats."

"DIGSWELL DUETS is a pretty good example of Coxhill's art. Recorded
(murkily at times) at artists commune Digswell House in 1978, the first half of
this album features the electroacoustics of Simon Emmerson, who treats and loops
Coxhill's improvisations in real time. Preceding SLOW MUSIC, Coxhill's
proto ambient tape loop driven collaboration with Morgan Fisher by a couple of
years, this is delightful, sensual music making. On First Encounter Part One
and the sourly celestial Additional Ending, Emmerson creates luxurious
floatscapes as the curling lines of the soprano are looped and repeated into
increasingly blurred drones. Though similar to Terry Riley's Poppy Nogood
and Fripp and Eno's Revox excursions in its immersive beauty, Coxhill's
questing ear and tireless invention resists the urge to play it safe. Elsewhere,
Emmerson subjects the saxophone to extreme filtering , ring modulation and all
manner of jiggery pokery; clouds of bats, foghorns and distressed owls are conjured
up in quick succession. Occasionally Coxhill cocks an ear, listens, then moves
on. You can almost hear him raise his eyebrows. Heady, beautiful stuff and historically
important too; though the notion of live improvisation and treatments is pretty
old hat these days, it certainly wasn't in 1978.

The second half of the CD documents one of Coxhill's first sessions with pianist
Veryan Weston. Jazzier pleasures are on offer here. Weston's knotty chords are
a perfect foil for Coxhill and their interpretations of Embraceable You
and I Can't Get Started are wonderful; the duo gently deconstruct but
avoid pastiche (no easy feat). On the latter track Coxhill balances long, affectingly
melodic arcs with sardonic mutterings as Weston's piano dips in and out of the
song's changes. Both musicians know this stuff backwards, and although at times
it may sound like they're even playing it backwards, there's a deep awareness
and respect for jazz tradition here coupled with a playful sense of discovery.
Lovely."

"There is simply no other soprano saxophonist like Lol Coxhill. Although
his busking days are entirely behind him, Coxhill's improvising mentality remains
that of a musician playing in tube stations and on street corners. He can be
impeccably song-like; his little airs sinuous, graceful, and quite blue with
bent, scooped and - especially - slurred tones. Conversely, he can also become
enmeshed in his mercurial persona, lapsing into hectoring effects and lines
gnarled with contentiousness. As he indulges in split-second changes of mood,
Coxhill may contort himself into a performer ripping off a mask, only to reveal
a new one underneath. The slipping about of his tone on the glazed surface of
his chosen pitches seals the impression of slapstick. Coxhill's art, then, is
one that demands a great deal of poise, and there is something almost ritual
about manner in which his improvisations, especially his solo performances,
consistently involve the same relatively fixed set of emotional elements. And,
as with the sidewalk games played by children, participating in Coxhill's music
and observing it can yield very different experiences. One may be delightful,
the other fraught with deep, potentially corrupted feelings and a sense that
something extraordinary lurks beneath the codes and rules directing the behaviours
of the players.

It is the collaborations with Simon Emmerson and his Digswell Tapes System
which are of particular value. Superficially, Emmerson and Coxhill assume an
approach that is both colourisitic and eminently lyrical. These performances
might even recall to some listeners Terry Riley's chorales for soprano sax and
tape delay feedback system. There are important distinctions, however. The
electronics in Riley's early studies are truly automatic and controlled by a
human intelligence only so far as their processes are set up and cued by the
performer. And the works themselves are very mimetic, with one instrument in
control of an entire orchestra that sounds just like itself. By contrast, Emmerson
is a truly equal partner here. Moreover, over the course of these performances,
the two men toss back and forth, stretch, wad up and smooth out the natural
plangency and notorious intonation and inflection difficulties of the soprano
sax. There are the clarinet-like sounds heard in First Encounter Part One,
the crystalline notes dotting Side One Part Two, and the bassoon calls
of First Encounter Part 3. Still, long stretches of this music are Riley-like,
especially in the opening First Encounter Part One and the long Side
One Part One. Coxhill's response to Emmerson's time-lagged reiteration of
what he has just played generates an almost infinite flow of melody, an unstoppable
outpouring, out-of-tempo, that suggests the opening alapa section of an Indian
raga. And, at about the four-minute mark of Side One Part One, Coxhill
indeed plays a whirling, Eastern-sounding tune.

Yet - and this is better heard over headphones, as the stereo panning and
flanging effects are rendered much more explicit - these duets are very much
about sound as a symbolic representation of time, space, and motion. Here, sound
is offered as a reflection of local conditions, individual sounds as traces or
remnants of one's identity left behind as one passes through an environment. On
First Encounter Part Two, the space defined is industrial, jarring:
against an echo of klaxons or steam screaming from safety valves, notes from the
saxophone are bent and truncated so they sound like drops of water striking metal
surfaces. At the piece's conclusion, a steely web of reverb surrounds Coxhill;
he is in the heart of the complex, his sound faint and whistling but not crushed
in the gears of various sequencer rhythms. Additional Ending finds the
'natural' and the 'processed' vying with one another, much in the manner that
the dulcet and the perverse vie in Coxhill's own style. The space expands more
and more as the contest wrenches towards a stalemate, emblematic of an entropic
universe that will continue to burn outwards until it turns still, black and
cold. Additional Ending is the dark obverse of the infinite sound of
ecstatic praise, of the song heard in Side One Part One. Or, rather,
Additional Ending reveals how that feeling of boundlessness is an illusion;
a fiction that allows for the momentary escape from yet also assures the ultimate
preservation of the self and its perceptual limitations. The finite is an emotional
necessity after all, but one that admits the existence of other, and is thus both
terrible and transporting in its disorder. Unique and even visionary, DIGSWELL
DUETS is more contemporary now that it perhaps has ever been."

"Coxhill has had a varied and eclectic career - it's not every musician
who's been in bands as diverse as Kevin Ayers' and The Damned! This particular
recording from 1978 captures Coxhill duetting, initially, with Simon Emmerson
(first six tracks) and then Veryan Weston (last ten tracks). The original album
had bits missing, so this new release should come as a bit of a happy ending as
most of the original recordings are here in their full glory. The first six tracks
feature Coxhill soloing through a variety of subtle and atmospheric effects via
the electronics of Simon Emmerson. To be honest, these are simply stunning. At
times you're reminded of Eno as the sax ends up processed beyond recognition,
leaving a kind of synth sound. The duets with Weston are, again, as different
again. Both Weston and Coxhill weave and interplay, creating some fascinating
textures. What startles are the renditions of Embraceable You and I
Can't Get Started - it would gobshut any critic who says this is just noodling.
If nothing else, it just goes to show why Coxhill is the man he is."

"The duets with Emmerson on the first half of the program are a spooky
affair built on space age technology. Emmerson programs his instrument to capture
the serene output of Coxhill. He manipulates and reprocesses the sound back to
allow Coxhill the opportunity to create new improvisation in duet with his
regenerated sound, which in turn is reprocessed by Emmerson to provide new fodder
for Coxhill. It is an ongoing creative loop, intricately honed by both artists
to simulate an atmosphere of outer space. The duets with Weston are presented
in the more traditional interactive mode for two artists. Coxhill swirls his
soprano sound round and round while Weston uses short, truncated phrases to enwrap
the high-pitched improvisations. It is an interesting contrast, with Coxhill making
flowing statements and Weston inserting choppy staccato exclamation points. Both
duet sessions connote the feeling of seriousness and form unique challenges for
Coxhill to explore the creative process. The cuts with Weston are particularly
stimulating."

FRANK RUBOLINO - CADENCE 2001

"The electronics set is superb; Coxhill plays freely and navigates the
sounds Emmerson provides, processed from Coxhill's playing. It's not gimmicky.
The sounds Emmerson creates are appropriately brassy and electronic in the analogue
sense. They both play hard. No tinkly floating electronic fireflies here."

"The first half features a 1978 concert by Lol Coxhill on soprano saxophone
with Simon Emmerson manipulating his sound output electronically. This is one
of the, if not the first recording of a saxophonist being processed in
real-time. Coxhill dialogues with his electronic ghost, interacting with Emmerson's
manipulations (20 years later John Butcher and Phil Durrant would use the same
technique, with much better technology). The electronics are not intrusive at
all, letting the saxophonist develop his mellow melodies. First Encounter
Part Two and Side One Part One are both precious moments.

The second half of the album is made of excerpts from a duo concert a few
days later with pianist Veryan Weston. One of the first recordings from this
long-standing duo, this set suffers a little from poorer sound quality. Halfway
through, the listener has the surprise of finding himself into the Gershwins'
Embraceable You, which retrospectively gives a delicate jazzy flavour to
this whole half. Both players were in very good shape, but this recording pales
in comparison to the duo¹s 1998 set Boundless (EMANEM
4021)."

"Helpful reissue of the '79 LP, always one of the more desirable nuggets
in the Coxhill back catalogue. It's sought after largely for the contents of its
first side - on which one Simon Emmerson electronically 'treats' Coxhill's sax
in real time - but contemporary reappraisal shows that the second - duos with
Veryan Weston - is of equal worth.

Though the methodology Emmerson utilises is now quite familiar - cf. Evan
Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Butcher/Durrant duo - in 1978 it was something
of a novelty and, 23 years on, it sounds as though it was at the time grappling
with its own newness and/or novelty. Emmerson tends to duplicate Coxhill's sax
into overlapping melodic streams, often creating a hall of mirrors-type effect
which initally sounds impressive but quickly wears off. The collaboration works
best when Emmerson's presence isn't immediately evident, when he subtly enhances
and smears Coxhill's playing; it's less effective when Emmerson indulges in sounds
which Coxhill could have achieved by feeding his sax through an echo unit.
Nonetheless, there's an enticing air of oddness about it, and any Coxhill fan
will want to investigate.

The duos with Weston are some of the first these two recorded, a typically
fulsome splurge of vignette-ish pieces. Coxhill's tone is warm and open, almost
sentimental - he holds the middle ground while Weston darts agilely around him,
a dynamic that's as much catch-as-catch-can as call-and response. The recording
quality is pleasantly musty, adding a surprisingly appropriate veneer of surface
nostalgia, reminding us of how far the pairing has come in the time since, and
quietly marking the inception of this most tastefully under-recorded of English
improv partnerships."